Category: Food and Drink
My Conversation with Githae Gitinji
This is a special bonus episode of CWT, Githae is a 58-year-old village elder who mediates disputes and lives in Tatu City, Kenya, near Nairobi. Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
In his conversation with Tyler, Githae discusses his work as a businessman in the transport industry and what he looks for when hiring drivers, the reasons he moved from his rural hometown to the city and his perspectives on urban vs rural living, Kikuyu cultural practices, his role as a community elder resolving disputes through both discussion and social pressure, the challenges Kenya faces, his call for more foreign investment to create local jobs, how generational attitudes differ, the role of religion and Githae’s Catholic faith, perspectives on Chinese involvement in Kenya and openness to foreigners, thoughts on the devolution of power to Kenyan counties, his favorite wildlife, why he’s optimistic about Kenya’s future despite current difficulties, and more.
Excerpt:
COWEN: What do you do that the court system does not do? Because you’re not police, but still you do something useful.
GITHINJI: What we normally do, we as a group, we listen to one another very much. When one person reaches that stage of being told that you are a man now, you normally have to respect your elder. Those people do respect me. When I call you, when I tell you “Come and we’ll talk it out,” with my group, you cannot say you cannot come, because if you do, we normally discipline somebody. Not by beating, we just remove you from our group. When we isolate you from our group, you’ll feel that is not fair for you. You come back and say — and apologize. We take you back into the group.
COWEN: If you’re isolated, you can’t be friends with those people anymore.
GITHINJI: When we isolate you, we mean you are not allowed to interact in any way.
COWEN: Any way.
GITHINJI: Any business, anything with the other community [members]. If it is so, definitely, you have to be a loser, because you might be needing one of those people to help you in business or something of the sort. When you are isolated, this man tells you, “No. Go and cleanse yourself first with that group.”
If you find his Kikiyu accent difficult, just read the transcript instead. This episode is best consumed in a pair with my concurrently recorded episode with Harriet Karimi Muriithi, a 22-year-old Kenyan waitress — the contrasts in perspective across a mere generation are remarkable.
What should I ask Fuchsia Dunlop?
Yes I will be doing a third (!) Conversation with her. She has written some of the best books and cooked some of the best food. Here is her Wikipedia page. Here is her home page.
Here is her new book — self-recommending if anything was — Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food.
Here is my previous podcast with Fuchsia, and here is my first podcast with her. This time around — what should I ask?
My excellent Conversation with Jacob Mikanowski
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
Jacob Mikanowski is the author of one of Tyler’s favorite books this year called Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land. Tyler and Jacob sat down to discuss all things Eastern Europe, including the differences between Eastern and Western European humor, whether Poles are smiling more nowadays, why the best Polish folk art is from the south, the equilibrium for Kaliningrad and the Suwałki Gap, how Romania and Bulgaria will handle depopulation, whether Moldova has an independent future, the best city to party in, why there are so few Christian-Muslim issues in Albania, a nuanced take on Orbán and Hungarian politics, why food in Poland is so good now, why Stanisław Lem hasn’t gotten more attention in the West, how Eastern Europe has changed his view of humanity, his ideal two week itinerary in the region, what he’ll do next, and more.
Here is one excerpt:
COWEN: Why isn’t Stanisław Lem more popular in the West today as a writer?
MIKANOWSKI: That’s interesting. I grew up on Stanisław Lem like some people grow up on the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. My dad’s a computer scientist. His father set up one of Poland’s first computers. The world of Polish science and science fiction: he used to read the Tales of Pirx the Pilot and the Ijon Tichy stories — the robots, the short, fun ones — like they were fairy tales. I grew up with them.
I think — actually I have trouble going back to those. I’d go back to Solaris, and I think Solaris is a real masterpiece and I think it’s had lasting influence. But there’s something pessimistic about them. They don’t have that thing that Asimov does, or even Dune, of world-building and forecasting the human future far in advance. They are like Kafka in space, and that’s absurd situations, strange turns of events — I think a pretty pessimistic view of progress. Maybe that makes them hard to digest. Also a kind of odd sense of humor with the short stories. Almost a childlike sense of humor that maybe makes them hard to take.
I think there’s been a little bit of a Lem revival, though. I know technologists, some people like them; futurologists like him. I like him.
COWEN: Some of the cybernetics tales, they seem weirdly close to the current state of LLMs. And I think I’ve seen this mentioned once, but it’s not generally known: the idea that you use them to talk to, that they’re weird, they might be somewhat mystical, they serve as therapists or oracles — that’s very much in Lem, quite early.
MIKANOWSKI: I think people should go back to them. I think — I was just thinking of Solaris, which I always thought about as this story about contacting a truly alien alien. Now it’s like, well, this is a little bit of what we’re doing with virtual reality and AI. It’s like, what would happen if you could actually talk to your dreams, if you could revive people? You could have the mimicry of consciousness, the appearance of consciousness, without anything behind it — without a consciousness.
There’s something seductive about it, and there’s something monstrous about it. I think he was there way ahead of anyone else, and people should be going back to them. Maybe they will.
Of course we talk about the Suwalki Gap as well. And this: “Given all your study of Eastern Europe, what is it you feel you understand about the current war in Ukraine that maybe other well-informed people would not?”
Recommended, interesting throughout. Again, here is Jacob’s new and excellent book Goodbye Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land.
U.S.A. fact of the day
“Eating alone”
Bowling alone was just the beginning:
Even pizza, typically shared among family or friends, is downsizing.
In February, Domino’s Japan, the nation’s largest pizza delivery chain, introduced My Domino’s, a meal set that allows customers to order a small, 7-inch pizza with two side dishes for a reasonable price.
“Single consumers are growing, not only in Japan but in the world, and the question is how we can reach these people, how we can offer something special for these customers,” says Martin Steenks, CEO of Domino’s Japan. “The bento is always for one person, so why not create a pizza for one person? This was actually the biggest reason for us behind this whole set up.”
The concept proved a hit and according to Domino’s Japan, more than 2 million orders had been placed as of July 15. In addition, the company offers pizza rice bowls and pizza sandwiches — also targeting single consumers — and is trying to reach out to older customers who are typically less tech savvy compared to their younger counterparts.
Here is the full story.
Speeding Up Pharmaceutical Approvals by Recognizing Other Stringent Regulators
New Zealand’s ACT party has proposed that New Zealand speed up pharmaceutical approvals by recognizing the decisions of other stringent regulators, an idea I have long promoted .
The average time for Medsafe to consent an application for a high risk medicine is 630 days. For intermediate risk, it is 661 days and for lower risk it is 830 days8. The average time taken just for processing some lower risk categories is 176-210 days. This is an unacceptable length of time, given there other regulatory bodies replicating that exact same work overseas.
ACT says if a drug or medical device has been approved by any two reputable foreign regulatory bodies (such as Australia, United States, United Kingdom), it should be automatically approved in NZ as well within one week unless Medsafe can show extraordinary reason why it shouldn’t be.
This simple change would significantly improve access to medicines that have already been subject to rigorous testing and analysis through other regulatory regimes.
The ACT party is small but it has some seats and surprisingly the much larger National party is proposing a similar rule:
New Zealand’s slow approval process for medicines means Kiwis wait much longer than people in other countries to access potentially life-saving treatments. While it is essential that medicines and other treatments are subject to stringent scrutiny to ensure they are safe, there is no reason why New Zealanders should have to wait for our domestic medicines regulatory body, Medsafe, to conduct its own cumbersome process from scratch, when countries with health systems we trust have already gone through this exercise.
National will:…• Require Medsafe to implement even faster approvals processes for any medicines for use in New Zealand that have already been approved by at least two regulatory bodies that we currently recognise, including Australia, the EU, Singapore, the UK, Switzerland and the US.
New Zealand, by the way, already has a reciprocity agreement with the United States for food and it’s mutual–the FDA also recognizes New Zealand as a stringent food regulator–so the idea is not unprecedented.
Moreover, all of this comes on the tail of the UK actually adopting the idea via the “reliance procedure” which recognizes the EU as a stringent regulator and guarantees approval in the UK within 67 days for ay drug approved in the EU.
In the United States, even AOC has flirted with the idea, at least for sunscreens!
Thus, the reciprocity or recognition idea is starting to be adopted.
Hat tip: Eric Crampton who has some further comments.
Claims about food allergies
I find it is very difficult to trust written material on this topic, nonetheless here is a hypothesis I had not heard before:
So why have our immune systems suddenly gone haywire? One theory notes that we (mostly) eradicated hookworms by the 1980s in the United States. And roundworms. And tapeworms. All the classic parasites are mostly kaput. Without those actual threats, our immune system downshifts to tackle the biggest possible threat on the horizon. Which, these days, might be cashew butter or Camembert.
“It’s looking for stuff to do and it’s staying busy,” Warren said. “But it’s busy doing stupid stuff like reacting to walnuts and birch pollen.”
Some support for this theory comes from anecdotes offered by experts who infected themselves with hookworms to distract their overactive immune systems. While this method achieved some success in curbing stubborn allergies and other conditions, it seems unlikely we’ll see a massive experiment anytime soon that randomly infects healthy Americans with hookworms. Still, this so-called hygiene hypothesis helps explain why allergies may be on the march: Back when they were more widespread, hookworms and their friends may actually have reined in our immune systems’ most aggressive tendencies.
Here is more from Andrew Van Dam.
They Got the Lead Out of Turmeric!
Last year in Get the Lead Out of Turmeric! I reported that adulteration of turmeric was a major source of lead exposure among residents of rural Bangladesh. Well there is good news: the lead is gone! 
Wudan Yan at UnDark reports the remarkable story of academic research quickly being translated into political action that improves lives.
The story begins (more or less) with PhD student Jenna Forsyth:
Jenna Forsyth knew nothing about the practice of adding lead chromate to turmeric in 2014, when she started her Ph.D. in environment and resources at Stanford University. Excited to continue her masters research on water and sanitation, she sought out working with Stephen Luby, a world expert on the subject. When she arrived, Luby instead pointed Forsyth to a conundrum he was encountering in his work in Bangladesh: In a rural part of the country, pregnant women and children had high levels of lead in their blood. There were none of the usual suspects of lead exposure. There were no nearby battery recycling plants and families didn’t paint their homes. How could this be?
After eliminating dozens of explanations, Forsyth eventually hit on turmeric contamination. But Forsyth and the team didn’t just analyze turmeric in the lab, they hit the ground in Bangladesh:
They visited mills, and sometimes found sacks of the pigment on-site. They sampled dust from the polishing machine and from the floors of the mill. If there was about one part of lead to chromium, it was a dead giveaway that the adulterant was being used. From interviews, they also understood the motive: Brighter roots led to more profit, and adulterating with a consistently bright paint agent could disguise poorer-quality roots. The findings from this study were published in 2019.
Then they took their results to the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority:
The team held a meeting with the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority. The agency’s chairman at the time, Syeda Sarwar Jahan, was immediately concerned. She decided to spearhead a massive public information campaign.
…Local and international news outlets disseminated the findings from Forsyth’s new studies to create public awareness. The researchers met with businesses to make them aware of the risks of lead in turmeric. BFSA posted notices in the nation’s largest wholesale spice market, Shyambazar. The flyers warned people of the dangers of lead and that anyone caught selling turmeric adulterated with lead would be subject to legal action.
Authorities also raided Shyambazar using a machine called an X-ray fluorescence analyzer which can quickly detect lead in spices. Nearly 2,000 pounds of turmeric was seized in the raid and two wholesalers were fined 800,000 taka, more than $9,000 USD.
…In late 2019, as part of the intervention against lead chromate use in turmeric, the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority printed and distributed an estimated 50,000 copies of green flyers, that they shared with traders and plastered around the market. Be skeptical of fingers that appear too bright and yellow, it advised, and if the yellow dusting from turmeric doesn’t come off easily, it’s likely you’ve been played.
Getting rid of the lead isn’t just a cosmetic change. Lead can be so bad, especially for children, that removing it from spices improves lives at very low cost. Kate Porterfield writing at the EA Forum reports:
Despite being a preliminary assessment, this cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) of this intervention in Bangladesh presents an exceptionally encouraging outlook, with a cost per DALY-equivalent averted estimated at just under US$1. It is crucial not to overlook the profound significance of this outcome: US$1 represents a small investment for the equivalent of an additional year of life in optimal health.
Early results from Pure Earth’s Rapid Market Assessment project find that between 6 and 12 countries may have similar problems with contaminated spices. Large parts of northern India (also highly populated) are similarly affected. Other lead salts are also highly colored, in reds and oranges, and found in other products. Programs to halt intentional contamination of spices and other foodstuffs are enormously impactful, and ought to be a first response in the fight against lead poisoning globally.
Finally, other significant sources of lead exposure (including leaded pottery and aluminum cookware, paint, medicines etc) require a similar regulatory response, and are likely to show cost benefit ratios that are also very strong.
Bangladesh has done it. It is time for Northern India to also eliminate lead from spices.
Big congratulations to Forsyth and the other Stanford researchers who documented the problem and who cared enough to follow up with a plan to work with charities and governments in Bangladesh to solve the problem. Big congratulations also to Givewell who supported the project.
“What Harvard can learn from Olive Garden?”
That is the title of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one bit from it:
One lesson is that it’s harder to convince poorer individuals to mingle with wealthier individuals in settings where the culture is shaped to align with a higher socioeconomic status. Churches, for instance, are usually free and open to all — but the poor do not seem so keen on attending religious services in wealthier neighborhoods. Maybe that’s because they don’t view the wealthier church as a “better service” (however that might be defined) but rather as an environment where they do not feel entirely comfortable or welcome.
In other words: Wealthier institutions or establishments attract a mixed customer or user base only when they give up cultural control. Taller stained-glass windows and more comfortable pews can do only so much to attract lower-income churchgoers. (An aside: One nice feature of marketing “culture” — for lack of a better word — on the internet is that it can be broadly appealing. Classical music on YouTube, for example, is not only free but also free of snob appeal.)
The business model of America’s nonprofit sector depends on producing status and reputation, both for itself and its affiliates. Many nonprofits work at creating environments of a very particular sort, both to raise money and to boost their influence. To elites, those environments are innocuous, even inspiring. But those same elites are starting to realize that what is inviting to one person is off-putting to another.
Here is a related (and very good) column from Catherine Rampell.
On the negative correlation between price and restaurant quality
From my email, from an anonymous reader:
On your question of whether there’s a model for the apparent negative correlation between food quality and price:
It is often observed that food quality and the “atmosphere” of a restaurant appear to be negatively correlated. (As I’m sure Taleb points out somewhere, they are not actually negatively correlated, but only appear so because the restaurants that are low quality in both food and atmosphere do not survive.)
I think the apparent negative correlation between quality and atmosphere among surviving restaurants presents itself as a negative correlation between quality and price for two reasons:
1) There are far more people who go to a restaurant because it is familiar and/or convenient (“comfort market”) or fashionable/trendy (“mimetic market”) than people who actively seek out restaurants with good food (“gourmet market”). The demand curve is higher in the market for comfort/mimetic restaurant services (in which food quality does not matter above a certain baseline level of palatability) than in the market for gourmet restaurant services. While restaurants serving the gourmet market and restaurants serving the comfort/mimetic markets are substitutes, the cross-price elasticity of demand between them is probably quite low. When PF Chang’s raise their prices the customers go to Applebee’s, not to the high quality, family-owned Chinese place in the strip mall.
People who actively seek out good food are more likely to know how to cook good food themselves, providing a dimension of competition for restaurants in the gourmet market that restaurants in the comfort and mimetic markets do not have to deal with.
Within the gourmet market I would imagine that price and quality are positively correlated. If it really is the case that price and quality are negatively correlated even within the market of restaurants serving people who care about food quality, then I don’t know how to account for that or why anyone would ever go to the higher priced restaurant, unless purely for variety or for mimetic reasons, in which case those higher priced restaurants are not in the gourmet market but are in the mimetic market (since they would be paying extra for something other than pure food quality, even if the food is quite good – the restaurant is not entirely about the food).
The essential point is that since food quality and restaurant “atmosphere” appear to be negatively correlated, and since most will pay more for atmosphere (comfort, familiarity, fashion, etc) than for quality food, it also appears that food quality and price are negatively correlated.
Murugan Idli
E. 149, Murugan Idli Shop, 1, 6th Avenue, opp. Velankanni Church, GOCHS Colony, Besant Nagar, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600090, India
Most of all, get the Onion Rava Masala Dosa. The key dishes there cost not much more than one dollar, sometimes less.
Is there any general model as to why, so often in the world of food, price and quality are negatively correlated?
How to eat well in Sri Lanka
Food here is excellent, but eating well involves some counterintuitive advice.
For one thing, there are few “undiscovered gems” along the roadways. It is just not a thing here, and several Sri Lanka residents have confirmed this to me (one person suggested there used to be lots of them, but they have faded). During my extensive road travels, I saw many many closed, empty, or otherwise deserted roadside restaurants. The open ones had few or no customers. So don’t put a lot of time into searching for them. You will do just fine eating at the obvious restaurants, including hotel restaurants.
Often breakfast is the best meal, as you can sample hoppers and string hoppers. If they will cook a hopper for you with an egg (and spices) inside, do that. Think of it as a spongy carbohydrate turned into a kind of crepe. The egg inside should not be overdone, but the woman cooking it for you has done this 7,834 times before, so probably it will be just right.
When you get string hoppers, it is all a matter of composition. Put the right spices, sauces, and sambals on top. Ask for assistance. The quality of the string hoppers varies only marginally, it is really all about your skills at composition and at asking for aid.
Hoppers and string hoppers are pretty much always very good. You want to keep on ordering them. And yes, food in Sri Lanka is somewhat of an exercise in repeated monotony, but it is a very appealing repeated monotony.
Vegetables in Sri Lanka are first-rate, and if you visit the vegetable markets in and near Dambulla you will come away impressed. If you are served just ordinary broccoli or cauliflower, without spice or garnish, it will be as good as anywhere.
The best vegetable to eat Sri Lankan style is the green beans. Never turn them down. Overall, Sri Lanka is one of the very best countries for vegetarians or vegans. You’ll see many other kinds of curry, such as with jackfruit or manioc, and they are not bad, but once you have tried them you will be returning to the green beans.
The lentils are consistently superb, arguably better overall than in India, though in fewer styles. Keep on ordering them.
Thou shalt not refuse any curry served with cashews in it.
If you are at a buffet, sample any item that has a small green leaf in the sauce. Sample any item with an unusual name, with “tempered cowpeas” being one but not the only example.
Beware of buffets designed for Russian or Chinese package tourists, though usually there will be hoppers or string hoppers somewhere to be had.
Coconut roti is a wonderful snack, but you should not eat too many of them, either at once or across the course of a lifetime.
There is the usual array of tropical fruits, high in quality, though to be frank most of them bore me at this point.
Both pork and bacon are excellent (and common) in Sri Lanka. The pork is much better than the beef. So far I’ve had better luck with shrimp than with fish, though I don’t feel I’ve cracked the cultural codes yet for seafood. Some love Sri Lankan crab, but I haven’t had the chance to explore that direction.
Western-style baked goods are by no means a total disaster here, and it is not a mistake to try them. The high quality is supposed to stem from the earlier Portuguese influence, at least if you can believe llama Chat.
Aqua Forte, in Galle, is a Michelin star-quality Italian restaurant with affordable prices. The chef is from Trentino. The cured raw fish with pistachios is one of the best courses I’ve had in years.
In Colombo, Monsoon is a good Asian fusion place, get the beef rendang. Shang Palace is a good Chinese restaurant.
In sum, you can eat very well here at great prices and booking doesn’t ever seem to be a problem. You do need to be willing to double and triple down on some items, but don’t worry — you’ll like them!
Addendum: The perceptive reader will note I have covered only the food of southern Sri Lanka. That is also the part of the country — by far — that you are most likely to visit.
The Economics of Export Bans
India recently banned the export of non-Basmati rice. What are the economics of export bans? An export ban will tend to decrease the world supply thereby raising world prices but some of the previously exported goods will flow to the domestic market reducing domestic prices, which is the typical reason for an export bans.
FT: India’s ministry of consumer affairs said on Thursday it would prohibit exports to “lower the price as well as ensure availability in the domestic market”. Rice prices in India have risen 11.5 per cent over the past year and 3 per cent over the past month, according to the ministry, reflecting a 35 per cent year-on-year surge in export volumes between April and June.
As noted, in the very short run, an export ban will reduce domestic prices as export stocks flood the domestic market (although even here we have to be a bit careful as a temporary ban could lead to distributors storing–“hoarding”–grain in the expectation of a lifting of the ban). As producers adjust to the lower price and start to produce less, however, the quantity supplied will decrease and domestic prices will rise from Psr to Pban, as shown in the diagram.
Even in the long run the domestic price (Pban) will be below the free trade price (Pft) so the export ban helps domestic rice consumers, i.e. increases their consumer surplus (the green area). India has a lot of rice consumers who vote so the goal here is obviously political. The export ban, however, hurts rice producers, i.e. producer surplus declines (the hatched area). Moreover, producer surplus declines by more than consumer surplus rises so the net effect of the export ban is to reduce domestic welfare.
Rice producers in India are often small family farmers and the government tries to help these farmers with other policies like subsidies so the export ban goes against the grain of other government policy. Moreover, the decline in rice producer incomes will hurt rural incomes more generally. Thus, the export ban protects urban consumers at the expense of typically poorer rural farmers and is likely to increase inequality.
In the long run, an export ban means a smaller farm sector. An export ban is like prohibiting a hotel from raising prices during seasons of high demand. That’s nice if you can get a room but it means fewer hotels. In other words, more hotels will enter the market if they know that they can offset low profits in periods of low demand with high profits in periods of high demand. In the same way, preventing farmers from selling at high prices reduces farmer profits which reduces long run entry and production.
The United States had an export ban on crude oil for 40 years. It’s sometimes said that the export ban was non-binding because the US was a big oil importer. I suspect, however, that the export ban reduced the speed of the fracking revolution. The US export ban also lead to a lot of bizarre mispricing. The ban didn’t apply to refined oil products, for example, so the US went more heavily into refineries and over-produced refined oil products even when (on the margin) exporting crude oil at market prices would have been more profitable.
The Indian government does hold buffer stocks of rice. Strategic reserves have their own problems but it might have been better to draw on the strategic reserve rather than ban exports. Rice and circuses for the capital city at the expense of rural farmers is not a good long run strategy for economic development.
What could be more self-recommending than this?
Fuchsia Dunlop, Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food.
Due out in November. Here is my first CWT with Fuchsia, here is my second, there will be a third.
Korean markets in everything
One restaurant in Seoul rose to notoriety after “politely declining” people over 49 (on the basis men of that age might harass female staff), while in 2021, a camping ground in Jeju sparked heated debate with a notice saying it did not accept reservations from people aged 40 or above. Citing a desire to keep noise and alcohol use to a minimum, it stated a preference for women in their 20s and 30s.
Other zones are even more niche.
Among those to have caused a stir on social media are a cafe in Seoul that in 2018 declared itself a “no-rapper zone,” a “no-YouTuber zone” and even a “no-professor zone”.
Here is the full story, via Arpit Gupta.